:
Developing Talent Through
a Growth Mindset
Carol S. Dweck
Stanford University
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oaches are often frustrated and puzzled. They look back over
their careers and realize that some of their most talented
athletes—athletes who seemed to have everything-- never achieved
success. Why? The answer is that these athletes didn’t have
everything. They didn’t have the right mindset.
In my research, I have identified two mindsets that people can
have about their talents and abilities. Those with a fixed mindset
believe that their talents and abilities are simply fixed. They have
a certain amount and that’s that. In this mindset athletes may
become so concerned with being and looking talented that they
never fulfill their potential.
People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, think of talents
and abilities as things they can develop—as potentials that come
to fruition through effort, practice, and instruction. They don’t
believe that everyone has the same potential or that anyone can
be Michael Phelps, but they understand that even Michael Phelps
wouldn’t be Michael Phelps without years of passionate and
dedicated practice. In the growth mindset, talent is something you
build on and develop, not something you simply display to the
world and try to coast to success on.
issues, let me first answer some other questions that I am often
asked about the mindsets.
Questions About the Mindsets
Which mindset is correct? Although abilities are always a product
of nature and nurture, a great deal of exciting work is emerging
in support of the growth mindset. New work in psychology
and neuroscience is demonstrating the tremendous plasticity
of the brain—its capacity to change and even reorganize itself
when people put serious labor into developing a set of skills.
Other groundbreaking work (for example, by Anders Ericsson)
is showing that in virtually every field—sports, science, or the
arts—only one thing seems to distinguish the people we later call
geniuses from their other talented peers. This one thing is called
practice.
Are people’s mindsets related to their level of ability in the area?
No, at least not at first. People with all levels of ability can hold
either mindset, but over time those with the growth mindset
appear to gain the advantage and begin to outperform their peers
with a fixed mindset.
Almost every truly great athlete-- Michael Jordan, Jackie JoynerKersee, Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm, Pete Sampras-- has had a
growth mindset. Not one of these athletes rested on their talent;
they constantly stretched themselves, analyzed their performance,
and addressed their weaknesses. In the recent Olympics, silvermedal swimmer Dara Torres (age 41) and gold-medal marathoner
Constantina Tomescu-Dita (age 38) defied myths about age
through their training and dedication.
Are mindsets fixed or can they be changed? Mindsets can be fairly
stable, but they are beliefs, and beliefs can be changed. Later on,
I will describe workshops that have altered people’s mindsets and
had a real effect on their motivation and performance.
How Do The Mindsets Work? The Mindset Rules
The two mindsets work by creating entire psychological worlds,
and each world operates by different rules.
Research has repeatedly shown that a growth mindset fosters
a healthier attitude toward practice and learning, a hunger for
feedback, a greater ability to deal setbacks, and significantly better
performance over time. How do the mindsets work and what can
coaches do to promote a growth mindset? Before addressing these
In a fixed mindset the cardinal rule is: Look talented at all
costs. In a growth mindset, the cardinal rule is: Learn, learn,
learn!
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Rule #1.
In our work with adolescents and college students, those with a
fixed mindset say, “The main thing I want when I do my school
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work is to show how good I am at it.” When we give them a
choice between a challenging task they can learn from and a task
that will make them look smart, most of them choose to look
smart. Because they believe that their intelligence is fixed and they
have only a certain amount, they have to look good at all times.
Those with a growth mindset, on the other hand, say “It’s much
more important for me to learn things in my classes than it is to
get the best grades.” They care about grades, just as athletes care
about winning the game, but they care first and foremost about
learning. As a group, these are the students who end up earning
higher grades, even when they may not have had greater aptitude
originally.
Our studies show that it is precisely because of their focus
on learning that growth mindset students end up with higher
performance. They take charge of the learning process. For
example, they study more deeply, manage their time better, and
keep up their motivation. If they do poorly at first, they find out
why and fix it.
We have found that mindsets play a key role in how students
adjust when they are facing major transitions. Do they try to take
advantage of all the resources and instruction available, or do
they try to act as though they don’t care or already know it all?
In a study of students entering an elite university, we found that
students with a fixed mindset preferred to hide their deficiencies,
rather than take an opportunity to remedy them—even when the
deficiency put their future success at risk.
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Rule #2.
In a fixed mindset, the second rule is: Don’t work too hard or
practice too much. In a growth mindset, the rule is: Work with
passion and dedication—effort is the key.
Those with a fixed mindset believe that if you have natural talent,
you shouldn’t need much effort. In fact, having to work hard
casts doubt on your ability. I believe that this is why so many
enormously talented athletes never fulfill their potential. They are
often the ones who have coasted along, winning with little effort,
while the other athletes were sweating, struggling, and practicing.
The fixed mindset “naturals” never learn to work, so that when
they later reach their limits, they cannot cope. From Michael
Lewis’ wonderful book, Moneyball, we all know the story of the
super-talented Billy Beane, who was a colossal failure in the major
leagues because he didn’t think he should have to learn or try.
Those with a growth mindset know they have to work hard, and
they enjoy it. They understand that effort is what ignites their
ability and causes it to grow over time.
I get letters from former child prodigies in many fields. They
were led to expect that because of their talent, success would
automatically come their way. It didn’t. In the world of Olympic
sports, we do not do our young athletes a favor by allowing them
to believe that great talent alone will transport them to the medal
stand.
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Recently we conducted a small study of college soccer players. We
found that the more a player believed athletic ability was a result
of effort and practice rather than just natural ability the better
that player performed over the next season. What they believed
about their coaches’ values was even more important. The athletes
who believe that their coaches prized effort and practice over
natural ability were even more likely to have a superior season.
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a growth mindset, in which they sought and enjoyed challenges
and remained highly motivated even after prolonged difficulty.
Thus coaches might do well to focus their athletes on the process
of learning and improvement and to remove the emphasis from
natural talent. A focus on learning and improvement tells athletes
not only what they did to bring about their success, but also what
they can do to recover from setbacks. A focus on talent does not.
Rule #3.
We have also directly taught students the growth mindset. We
have been developing a software program, called Brainology, in
which students learn all about the brain and how to make it work
better. Further, they learn that every time they stretch themselves
and learn something new, their brain forms new connections, and
over time they increase their intellectual ability. Research has
We have found over and over that a fixed mindset does
shown repeatedly that teaching students the growth
not give people a good way to recover from setbacks.
mindset strongly enhances their motivation and
After a failure, fixed-mindset students say things
their achievement.
like “I’d spend less time on this subject from
Research has shown
now on” or “I would try to cheat on the next
Coaches can identify their fixed mindset
repeatedly that teaching students
test.” They make excuses, they blame others,
athletes by asking them to agree or disagree
the growth mindset strongly
and they make themselves feel better by
with statements like this: “You have a certain
enhances their motivation and
looking down on those who have done worse.
level of athletic ability, and you cannot really
Everything but face the setback and learn
their achievement.
do much to change that;” “Your core athletic
from it.
ability cannot really be changed;” and “You
can learn new things, but you can’t really change
It was so interesting to see in the last Olympics how
your basic athletic ability.” They can also ask their
many champions prevailed in events that were at some
athletes to complete this equation: Athletic ability is ____%
point not their strong suit. Chris Hoy, the Scottish gold medal
natural talent and ____% effort/practice. They can then work on
cyclist saw his specialty eliminated from the Olympics and had
fostering a growth mindset in their players who place an undue
to reinvent himself. He did not sit and lament his fate or blame
emphasis on fixed ability.
others; he got to work.
In a fixed mindset, the third rule is: When faced with setbacks,
run away or conceal your deficiencies. In a growth mindset,
the rule is: Embrace your mistakes and confront your
deficiencies.
What About Coaches’ Mindsets?
How Are Mindsets Communicated?
Mindsets can be taught by the way we praise. In many studies,
we have gotten a very surprising result. Praising children’s or
adolescents’ intelligence or talent puts them into a fixed mindset
with all of its defensiveness and vulnerability. Instead of instilling
confidence, it tells them that we can read their intelligence or
talent from their performance and that this what we value them
for. After praising their intelligence or talent, we found that
students wanted a safe, easy task not a challenging one they could
learn from. They didn’t want to risk their “gifted” label. Then,
after a series of difficult problems, they lost their confidence and
enjoyment, their performance plummeted, and almost 40% of
them later lied about their scores. What should we praise?
We found that praising students’ effort or strategies (the process
they engaged in, the way they did something) put students into
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Of course, coaches themselves can have a fixed mindset. These
coaches may convey to their teams that they value natural talent
above all, they may spend little time with the athletes they deem
less talented, and they may be intolerant of feedback from others
(since they may see feedback as impugning their own ability).
Research by Peter Heslin and his colleagues shows that business
managers with a fixed mindset have qualities like this. However,
after workshops that teach them a growth mindset, these same
managers are more eager to help their employees develop and
become more receptive to feedback from others.
A growth mindset coach is also more likely to foster teamwork
and team spirit. When a coach has a fixed mindset, players will be
eager to impress the coach with their talent and will vie to be the
superstar in the coaches’ eyes. However, if athletes know that their
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coach values passion, learning, and improvement, these are things
that players can work together to produce.
effort, improvement (and teamwork), not simply natural talent,
and present themselves as mentors and not just talent judges.
Conclusion
When coaching staffs have a fixed mindset, their job is simply
to find the talent. When they have a growth mindset, their job
is to inspire and promote the development of talent. It is in this
mindset, I believe, that they will nurture a new generation full of
Olympic athletes the likes of Michael Phelps and Nastia Liukin,
athletes who love their sport and bring it to the highest level.
At the level of the player, a growth mindset allows each individual
to embrace learning, to welcome challenges, mistakes, and
feedback, and to understand the role of effort in creating talent
At the organizational level, a growth mindset is fostered when
coaching staffs present athletic skills as acquirable, value passion,
Carol S. Dweck is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and
author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Diagram of Mindsets By Nigel Holmes
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